“Stop eating tomatoes will bring down prices”: UP minister

Hardoi:

Amid sharp rise in tomato prices across the country, Uttar Pradesh Minister of State for Women Development and Child Nutrition Pratibha Shukla on Sunday advised people to stop growing or eating tomatoes at home if they are expensive.

Ms. Shukla participated in plantation drives and planted saplings under the UP Government’s massive plantation programme.

“If tomatoes are expensive, people should grow them at home. If you stop eating tomatoes, the prices will inevitably come down. You can also eat lemons instead of tomatoes. If nobody eats tomatoes, the prices will come down,” said Ms. Shukla.

Citing the example of Asahi village nutrition garden, the UP minister said, there is a solution to this inflation, plant tomatoes at home. They are always expensive and if you don’t eat tomatoes then use lemons, skip the more expensive ones. It will automatically become cheaper.

He said, “In Asahi village we have made a nutrition garden, the women of the village have made a nutrition garden, and tomatoes can be planted there. There is a solution to this inflation, it is not new, tomatoes are always expensive. If you don’t eat tomatoes, use lemons, throw away the expensive ones, it will automatically become cheaper.”

Meanwhile, state consumer affairs, food and public distribution minister, Ashwini Kumar Choubey said on Friday that the consumer affairs department monitors the daily prices of 22 essential food items, including tomatoes.

To check the current price hike of tomatoes and make them available to consumers at affordable prices, the minister said, the government has started procurement of tomatoes under the Price Stabilization Fund and is supplying them to consumers at highly subsidized prices.

Chaubey said the National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) are continuously procuring tomatoes from mandis in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra and making them available at affordable prices to major consumer hubs in Delhi-NCR, Bihar and Rajasthan.

“Tomatoes were initially settled at a retail price of Rs 90 per kg which has been reduced to Rs 80 per kg from July 16 and Rs 70 per kg from July 20,” said minister Kartikeya Sharma, who asked about measures taken by the government to control prices for consumers.

(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and appeared on a syndicated feed.)